The City of Santa Monica has provided Gigabit broadband to local tech and entertainment businesses for years, but as of Friday, the City will offer City Hall visitors a chance to use broadband speeds that outpace U.S. and global broadband speeds.
For the next month City Hall visitors can browse the web, search for jobs, and conduct research without any noticeable delay due to the ultra-fast 1 Gigabit speeds.
Jory Wolf, the City of Santa Monica’s Chief Information Officer, said the “Gig Test” is the latest project from CityNet, Santa Monica’s broadband initiative committed to offering broadband solutions considered affordable and fast by global standards.
“Santa Monica continues to leverage our fiber optic network to maximize its benefit to our community for a number of community priorities including transportation, Wi-Fi access, education, mobility, and economic development,” Wolf said. “We have been a leader in network technologies, and will continue our focus on continuous improvement in this area into the future.”
Global studies on broadband have pointed to the U.S. lagging behind other developed countries.
In a 2012 broadband study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States ranked 13th out of its 34 member countries for average advertised download speeds.
Gary Carter, Broadband Program Administrator explains, “Redefining broadband standards for Santa Monica is not only important for our local community, but contributes to a national and global policy effort to enhance broadband in terms of broadband deployment, speeds, affordability, and adoption.”
CityNet has long served as a successful model for other local governments, demonstrating how a public agency can offer innovative network solutions to its community without a negative impact to its budget.
In 2013, Santa Monica’s broadband model was included in a study on “Successful Practices of Broadband Deployment,” for the Federal Working Group established by President Obama’s Executive Order Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment.
